In brief: Twitch is an excellent platform for streaming games, but the technology behind it could soon be used for other purposes. New reports claim that the platform's owner, Amazon, may license Twitch's live-streaming tech out to other corporations, no matter which industry they're in.
This may come as a surprise, given how strongly Twitch's brand is associated with gaming, but it's far from a terrible idea on Amazon's part. Twitch was one of the trailblazers in the game streaming industry, and it still holds a strong position to this day -- it wouldn't have been able to do that if it weren't for some very strong behind-the-scenes technology that allows everything to work smoothly.
We don't know exactly what that technology looks like, but we can certainly see the end result. Twitch's streaming platform is feature-rich and stable (with a few exceptions). There are also plenty of community integrations that let content creators directly interact with their viewers, and there's built-in monetization with subscriptions and mid-stream ads.
In short, if what you need is a reliable way to communicate and interact with large quantities of people live, Twitch is the full package. However, it's heavy gaming focus won't be for everyone, so if Amazon does sell off the technology to other firms, it'll probably come up with a more generic version for that purpose.
According to The Information, if these plans move forward, the goal will be to offset the loss Amazon is taking by keeping Twitch afloat. Apparently, Twitch hasn't proven nearly as profitable as the retail giant hoped it would be -- the site generated a few hundred million dollars in revenue in 2019, falling short of "internal" forecasts, which came closer to the $600 million mark.
